Charge to plant someone a foodplot?

[Bill]

A guy down the road wants me to put in 3 acres of beans for him.
I have no idea what a fair price is for this.

I'd be no tilling then spraying. Obviously a charge for the seed and spray.
Equipment is my tractor, drill and sprayer.

What's fair? $25/ hour, $50/ hour. I have no clue.

 

[bryant]

$50 seems like a very reasonable price to me. But like mentioned above could be some spraying issues.

 

[foggy]

I think I would estimate the time required to do the work......and tell him one fixed price. I can see about an 4 hour day's work in no-till seeding the beans (??) If you think $50 / hour is fair....that would be $200. Then you have the spraying.......and seed costs to add. You gotta hope he doesn't have rocks and such. I'd walk the land to be certain.

Of course.....I have been doing an acre sized plot for my neighbor for FREE. He also plows my snow and we have a good relationship.....which is worth more than money. I'd do more for him if he didn't have so many rocks and a wetland area to cross (I'm afraid I'm going to get stuck when it's wet). I busted some disk blades on rocks at his place...... The cost isn't so bad....but the time and energy to fix my stuff is frustrating.

 

[tcook8296]

I have someone doing plots for me in Illinois. Any work/spraying done from tractor or quad is $65.00 per hour + material. Drilling with a no till drill is $95.00 per hour + seed. The cost seems higher than the other prices I see but for a knowledgeable person hauling heavy equipment around their time is worth something. He is also licensed to spray. I usually like to plant myself but If I cant get to it, I don't mind paying to have it done since I live in NJ and my farm is 900 miles away in Illinois. It doesn't really take him that long to do my food plot work and so far Im happy with his work, response and results so far. For a friend, you could cut him some slack

 

[Bill]

Thanks everyone for all the input. I think I'll go with $50 and hour and spray for free.

John your probably right about the spraying, even in MO I bet something is required to spray commercially.

I'm just really doing him a favor. Certainly don't want to go into the food plot business.

 

[Jordan Selsor]

I would say 50/hr + material is very reasonable an a good friend price. Most guys charge a delivery fee for equipment and 75+ an hr with 4 hr minimum around here when operating equipment

 

[Greta&Gus]

We used to run a food plot business. In total of 4 years of operation we had about 25 clients. As a business, it is really hard and at a minimum you need to charge $50 an hour plus millage charges. Doing maintenance on your equipment triples when you are doing it on other peoples land. If you are a real business, you also need to pay for insurance and all other associated fees. It is just not a business worth doing.

We also learned it is far harder to plant plots on someone else's property than your own. Soils vary from spot to spot and if someone has never planted plots it normally takes 3 years to get an area into good soil condition to plant quality plots if it was just native browse.

I suggest you charge $25 an hour under the table plus seed and chemical expenses. You don't want to charge a guy a ton of money and his plots burn out or don't grow. If that happens you will feel terrible if your plots look great and his don't.

 

[Jordan Selsor]

25/hr is way to cheap to run any piece of equipment IMO! I would charge my own brother more than that lol;)

 

[Freeborn]

$50 an hour is still low in my opinion but as a neighbor probably a good thing to do. I would make certain he knows your not responsible for the weather. If it does not work out to your liking you can always decline in future years.

Good luck!

 

[Bill]

Seems like the same soil as mine which is good. I already told him the beans wouldn't ever get more than 6 inches tall.

Between being a first year planting and the fact that its over 2 miles to another ag field and the deer will hammer it.

I'm going to put up an exclusion cage just to see.

 

[j-bird]

I had a guy drill some NWSG for me last year and he charged me roughly $50/hr including travel. I did all the prep work and provided the seed - all he did was run his tractor and drill. IF you do this keep track of your time and costs that way you can defend your price should you need to.

 

[foggy]

I planted 1.5 acres of beans yesterday. I do not have a no-till.....rather I am "old school". I had to spread fertilizer, till, broadcast the beans, drag and cultipack. Five trips. Took me over four hours (plus I spent another couple hours on a sugar beet plot). If you have enough land to plant....that no till drill would be pretty slick.

 

[bwoods11]

I like to trade off leaving food plots as part of the overall rent on the tillable. Is this an option for your neighbor?

Otherwise, yes $50/acre would be more than fair.

 

[Bill]

There was some great looking top ground up there. Unfortunately most of it is in CRP. He only has about 10 acres that he can utilize. It's a shame too. Lots of places for CRP that would help his hunting and still about 70 acres that would take crops with no erosion issues.

I saw all kinds of improvements that could their hunting better but I'm biting my lip. I don't want the job.

No good deed goes unpunished. I did the Job for him and now I have 3 messages on my machine from another guy wanting plots.

I'm tapping out. Heck I can't get my stuff done the way I want most of the time.